At the present time in hospitals or day clinics, bladder irrigation, assuming a Foley catheter is in place, is carried out by using a syringe to feed in about 50 cc. of suitable liquid (usually water). This liquid eventually drains out by the same route and is collected in a container. Such irrigation may be done for medical purposes or to clear the tube and the distal outlet of the catheter of any accumulation of substances such as mucus which may block the catheter. The procedure is time-consuming and messy and gives rise to a considerable risk of cross-infection.
Efforts have been made to minimize the cross infection problem by providing special and complicated designs of catheter venting and urine sample collecting units. One example is the arrangement shown by Eisenberg et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,116,227.
It would be useful to have available a bag of sterile liquid with the bag parts also entirely sterile. One possiblility would be to fill the bag with a non-sterile fluid and then autoclave the bag and its contents. This procedure is unlikely to be attractive economically and has problems as the bags may burst. Another possibility is to use sterile filling procedures of the kind that are wellknown to pharmaceutical manufacturers of hospital equipment. In this case, one must ensure that no infection can be introduced when access is gained to the contents of the bag at the time of their use. In other words, the bung, cork, screwcap or other filling must present to the catheter which is fitted to it a totally sterile entrance, otherwise the whole point of sterilizing the bag contents is lost.